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Brave New World

Aldous Huxley

Start date: January 1, 2019

Finish date: January 31, 2019

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What Members Thought

Jan 25, 2010 tiph rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy-sci-fi, 2011, kindle

I was fascinated, in the beginning, by the descriptions of how people were no longer born, but grown in test tubes, decanted, and conditioned to be whatever their predestination dictated them to be. At first I wondered if I was going to get more description about how life was, then realized - wow, life is this: just this.
Everyone addicted to their hallucinatory drugs and used to doing nothing but what they're told. Of course, there are a few people, the Alphas (physical appearance and intellige ...more

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Oct 02, 2011 Beth rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books, audiobooks

Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of the small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

“Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!” The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. “You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” He quoted the planetary motto “Community, Identity, Stability.” Grand words.

“If we could bokanovskify indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved.”

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of the small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.

“Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!” The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. “You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” He quoted the planetary motto “Community, Identity, Stability.” Grand words.

“If we could bokanovskify indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved.”

Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.

I have read a lot of dystopian fiction this year, for some reason. Brave New World is a classic of this genre. It is a quick, easy read, or in my case listen while running. The language is direct, the plot is clear, the characters are engaging. The world Huxley paints is on one hand disturbing--people gestated in bottles and conditioned and subliminally programmed to happily accept their assigned status in life, with a sort of bland pleasure induced by drugs and multisensory "feelies" (movies of a sort) to keep people entertained and peaceful--but at another level, mildly seductive--the leader of Western Europe explains why a society of all bright independent people didn't work when tried, why the inhabitants of that society begged to be let back into the fold. For me the most disturbing thing about this novel was that it wasn't more viscerally disturbing to me. 1984 gave me the creeps from the get-go, but Brave New World makes a disturbingly persuasive case, both in the illustration of the society, and in its defense by various characters, for the dystopian world it ultimately critiques. I can imagine many people wanting the world where Ford replaces God, and drugs replace disagreement and difficult emotion. In fact, it could be argued that much in our current society shows us to be quite committed to move in that direction, with only a deficit in the appropriate technologies preventing our arriving there already. Still I think I would not be able to live without literature, without meaningful human attachment, without the truth and beauty that are sacrificed for peace and commerce. With Huxley, I must argue for our current, flawed, messy world or for solutions that don't require the compromises and sacrifices of basic humanity that Huxley's dystopian world's peace relied upon.
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Jan 30, 2020 Amanda rated it really liked it

Would you choose pain and unpleasantness in order to gain experience or would you choose blissful ignorance? Would you want to live a life of no consequences at the cost of loosing any deep personal relationship? Would you choose God (or any higher power) over convenience? What brave new world would you choose?

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